


To Feel More Real

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, Post-Movie, Self-Harm, rated T for thematic elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-06-30 11:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19852531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Title pretty much says it. Pitch likes to cut himself. All over. Hence the wardrobe.+Pitch’s blood is black++One of the Guardians (preferably Jack or Tooth) finds out and reacts"Tooth, in looking through Pitch’s memories in his tooth to try to figure out what could be done to avoid another Easter incident, discovers that he’s harming himself. This doesn’t relate to any consequences for his actions, and she goes to talk to him about it.





	To Feel More Real

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 5/14/2016.

She knows Pitch is nearby, though there’s nothing particularly distinctive about this place. It’s just another dark edge of town, just beyond the glare of chain stores and their parking lots. But she can guess why Pitch would be here, or somewhere like it. There’s something eerie about these edges. The hideous homogeneity of fluorescent and neon and all the bright flat colors becomes unbearable, but when a person leaves that dull, crass center, well, what’s there? Something that person wants, but nothing that’s familiar. Nothing that they’ve prepared for. Nothing that they know about, and possibly more than they’ve imagined. Something that no one has tried to sell, not even in the movies. At least, this is what Tooth has concluded from all the memories she’s gathered over the years as bright voids grew over the landscape. They offered only brightness, not wonder, not hope, not dreams, but at least they weren’t the dark that still waited outside. But with time, even that dark could appeal.  
  
Of course Pitch would want to be in darkness like that, a patient darkness that could never be made to leave, and could never be truly avoided by anyone who wanted to seek something other than the kind of illumination that prevented a view of the stars.  
  
But then, Tooth thinks she shouldn’t “of course” anything about Pitch. Because the reasons she can find him here is that she has his tooth, the reason she has his tooth is that he wasn’t content to wait in the darkness on the edges of towns, and the reason she’s sought him out with it is that in it she saw that something is very wrong.  
  
When Tooth takes a tooth, it comes with every single one of the memories of the person it came from. She had been going through Pitch’s memories to see what might be done to prevent something like last Easter from happening again.  
  
All her ideas after looking at those memories had involved going and talking to Pitch. And after seeing a few other things, she knew she had to talk to him sooner, rather than later.  
  
A shadow moves strangely, and because Tooth knows that the Boogeyman is nearby, she doesn’t dismiss it as the wind in the trees with a nervous laugh.  
  
When he sees her, one fist clenched, he backs up. “Gumballs don’t taste the same as they used to,” he says. “I don’t really need another quarter.”  
  
“You actually used it?” Tooth asks in surprise. “I thought the quarter would have gotten left on the ice.”  
  
Pitch smiles. “Apparently, you knocking one of my teeth out was considered a legitimate means of collection by your powers. The quarter appeared in a pocket I didn’t even know my robe had, after I was dragged underground. He pauses. “I think it helped keep the nightmares away until they had to leave to find other sustenance. I expect Sandy has reclaimed all his sand by now.”  
  
“All he’s found,” Tooth says. “There was quite a lot of it.”  
  
“Well, that’s the thing about stealing from an infinite quantity when you don’t have much else to do.” Pitch shrugs. “So why are you here? Certainly not to chat about teeth and quarters, though, if you’ve exhausted that subject with everyone else you know…”  
  
Tooth moves a little further back from Pitch, hovers a little lower. “I came here to talk about something I found in the memories in your tooth.” She opens her fist, showing it to him.  
  
“What?” Pitch narrows his eyes. “And you haven’t attacked me? Really, is there anything in my memories that isn’t worth attacking me for? How very strange.”  
  
“Pitch.” Tooth sighs. “I know you have black blood, even though you don’t spill it in battle.”  
  
Pitch freezes. “So nothing is hidden from you,” he says after a long moment. “Why tell me that you know this? Why? To shame me? I am already ashamed, you cannot add to the shame I feel.”  
  
“I…” The feathers on Tooth’s crest fluff up for just a moment. There’s no point in getting nervous now, is there? She came here to say something to Pitch, it would be no good to back out now that he’s in front of her. “I came here because it’s a problem that…that I know you shouldn’t have.”  
  
Pitch interrupts her by laughing. “As opposed to all the ones I should have?”  
  
Tooth flies higher and closer. “If you’re going to be that way, yes! You’ve done terrible and harmful things to others, and you have to face some sort of consequences!” She notices, then, how Pitch cowers, and backs away. She goes on in a softer tone of voice. “But what you’ve been doing to yourself has nothing to do with, for example, stealing my fairies. You’ve already faced the consequence for that, after all.”  
  
Pitch looks at her strangely. “You mean to say one punch and we’re even for that?”  
  
“You…think you need to be punished more?”  
  
Pitch frowns. “Don’t you? Don’t the rest of the Guardians? If you didn’t, why keep me the way I am, so powerless, so hated?”  
  
“Your lack of believers isn’t a punishment,” Tooth says. “I think…I think it’s the sign of a problem. Though I don’t know exactly what it is yet, or how to solve it.” She sighs again. “I think something is wrong because you were right about there always being fear. There are so many names for you. I can’t tell why you aren’t as real and solid to children as the Guardians are.”  
  
“You’re just realizing this _now_?”  
  
“I was busy,” Tooth says. “And you never asked for help! You disappeared and only reappeared to try to murder everyone that might have a chance of understanding what was going on!”  
  
Pitch glares at her for a moment before looking down. “What you’ve seen me do to myself, I do it to help myself feel more physically real. I held off for quite some time after our fight. I suppose that’s funny. And I suppose you might say that there are other ways I could remind myself of my physicality, but…I only give myself what I feel I deserve.” He looks up to see Tooth nodding slowly. “So you think I deserve it, too.”  
  
“I was nodding to show I understood,” Tooth says. “Not to agree with your conclusions.” She leans forward in the air. “Pitch, I can’t take away your control over shadows or your nails, but that wouldn’t solve the problem anyway. And since I don’t think you want to do this forever, would you consider coming with me, and working with the Guardians, to at least try and figure out why you don’t have the place in the world you should?”  
  
Pitch is silent for nearly a minute, and Tooth feels her feathers twitching in her effort to simply wait. “If you have really started to care what happens to me, for some reason…helping me be as real as you may not stop the habit I have.”  
  
“Isn’t it worth trying something, though?” Tooth gestures to the night around them. “This should be yours, shouldn’t it? Not just a place where you can survive?”  
  
“Well, if even you can tell…” Pitch says. “How do you presume to keep me from upsetting your fairies in the Tooth Palace?”  
  
“You mean, keep you from hurting yourself? If it’s physicality that makes a difference…”  
  
Pitch unconsciously brings his hand to his jaw.  
  
Tooth gives him a small smile. “How about high fives?”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> mira-eyeteeth said: Oh Pitch my poor terrible baby. You are so messed up and you really need some help. This was lovely!
> 
> tejoxys said: Ohhh this is an interesting one. I love how you write these two interacting; they seem to read each other better than most others do, for whatever reason. I also really like the description of liminality here.
> 
> sylphidine said: I’m…. going to be digesting this one for a while. Hrrmmmmmm.
> 
> bowlingforgerbils said: Very nice take on this prompt, on why Pitch would self-harm and how that relates to his issues in the movie.


End file.
